A new history of Hong Kong that reveals the untold stories of the diverse peoples who have made it a multicultural world metropolis--and whose freedoms are endangered today.
Fortune’s Bazaar: The Making of Hong Kong explicitly rejects the tale-of-two-cities approach, and this is what makes it so illuminating ... With so many names and families intersecting over time in this book, and without a central narrative of a single clan or institution to hold things together, England’s comprehensiveness can sometimes lead us onto the brittle outer branches of genealogy ... But this book is a testament to a third and better metaphor for a place like Hong Kong, something molecular.
England’s impressive research into genealogy, church records, land registries and wills shows that Protected Women usually lived well and sometimes became wealthy in their own right ... For all its wealth of detail, is less a straightforward narrative than a quirky history told through the stories of Eurasians and other mixed-culture residents. The jumble of names and places can be confusing, but the persistent reader will be rewarded with an enhanced understanding of what it means to be a Hong Konger.
Journalist England’s history of the people of Hong Kong celebrates the innovation and vigor catalyzed by the mixing of diverse cultures ... The narrative is largely biographical, anchored in the complex trajectories of individual Hong Kongers.
